


Nostalgia in the Morning

by KChan88



Series: Sailing By Orion's Star: Deleted Scenes [8]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 04:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8272246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KChan88/pseuds/KChan88
Summary: 13-year-old Enjolras oversleeps for his sword lesson after staying out late the night before, and Javert finds himself battling an adolescent to get out of bed. Javert's discovery of Enjolras' hidden abolitionist literature makes a soft moment grow sour.





	

**Port Royal, Jamaica. 1703.**

Enjolras finds himself awoken abruptly when someone pulls open his bedchamber curtains, keeping his eyes resolutely shut despite the bright light creating an aura of orange against his lids.

“Up, Rene.”

Javert’s voice.

Enjolras cracks his eyes open.

“Why are you in my _room_?” he asks, still not opening his eyes all the way, groggy.

“Because you are a half-hour late for your lesson with me, that’s why,” Javert says. “Your father said your mother was supposed to wake you up to come and meet me since he had to leave early this morning.”

“She did,” Enjolras says, closing his eyes again and turning over and away from Javert. “But I fell back asleep.”

“Well, you’re getting up now,” Javert says, annoyed. “I have better things to do than battle a thirteen-year-old boy out of bed.”

“Well then go _away_ ,” Enjolras protests, pulling the covers over his head. “I’m on holiday from my tutors for two weeks, let me sleep and go do those better things you just mentioned.”

“No,” Javert argues. “Your father and I leave out for two, possibly three weeks in just a few days, we need this lesson.”

Javert tugs on the bedcovers from the bottom, pulling them halfway off before Enjolras can sit up and yank back, forced to open his eyes.

“You are ridiculous,” Javert grumbles.

“You’re ridiculous,” Enjolras echoes, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and rubbing his eyes.

Javert sighs, turning around to retrieve something from the windowsill.

“You’re not supposed to have a great deal of this I know, but I brought it nevertheless,” he says, and Enjolras sees there’s a steaming cup of coffee in his hands with a generous amount of milk, just as he prefers it. “Drink it.”

Enjolras can’t help but smile a tad, accepting the cup and sipping the still hot liquid.

“Thank you,” he says, looking over at Javert, begrudging but thankful. “You remembered how I like it.”

Javert sits down awkwardly in the chair next to the bed, watching him, a tiny, amused smile slipping onto his face that reminds Enjolras of his younger self; sometimes at eight and twenty, Javert seems an old man already.

“What?” Enjolras asks, half-forgetting his anger and feeling a laugh bubble up at Javert’s expression.

“You look rather like an irritated cherub with your hair all mussed like that,” Javert says, clearing his throat against a chuckle.

“Oh,” Enjolras says, pushing at Javert’s knee with his bare foot poking out from under his long nightshirt.

“Don’t wrinkle my breeches,” Javert says, batting his hand away, smile growing a little despite himself.

“Heaven forbid,” Enjolras says, dry.

“I thought sword lessons were one of your favorite things,” Javert says, leaning back in the chair and surveying him with narrowed eyes as if solving a mystery. “I didn’t really think I’d have to pull you out of bed.”

“They are,” Enjolras says. “I’m just tired today.”

“Why are you so tired?” Javert asks, raising an eyebrow. “Were you up late?”

“No,” Enjolras lies, too quick.

“Rene,” Javert chides. “You were out late weren’t you?”

“Javert you don’t like it when I am,” Enjolras says. “So why do you ask? If you don’t know then you don’t have to be upset with me.”

Javert sighs again, louder this time.

“Where’s Frantz then? He didn’t seem to be in his room.”

“Likely out walking by the shore,” Enjolras says. “He gets…nightmares around this time of year. Two weeks from yesterday will be two years since his father died.” Enjolras looks up at Javert, a challenge in his voice. “Going to report him for it?”

“No,” Javert says, and Enjolras hears his voice grow softer beneath the irritated growl. He pauses, and Enjolras hears the lecture approach. “Rene, you cannot behave like this forever,” Javert continues. “Walking out at all hours of the night, talking back to everyone, disregarding propriety.”

“Last I noticed you weren’t my father,” Enjolras says, resentfully drinking the coffee. “So I’m not sure why you believe you can tell me what to do.”

“Your father thought perhaps you might listen to me more easily,” Javert admits.

Enjolras puts the coffee cup on the end table, looking down, his hand unconsciously reaching for the bruise on his upper arm, left by his grandfather a few days ago.

“Do you enjoy lecturing me?” Enjolras asks, seeing Javert’s eyes move to his arm as well. “Do you even…” he trails off, picking the coffee back up again.

“What?” Javert asks, and Enjolras resists the urge to roll his eyes, frustrated with Javert’s lack of emotional intelligence.

“Care?” Enjolras asks. “About me? Anymore?”

“Rene, please,” Javert says, exasperated, but there’s a vulnerability in his voice.

“You’re not answering me.”

“Of course I do, don’t be foolish,” Javert says. “Enough now, get dressed, we’ve wasted enough time already.”

Enjolras looks at him for a moment, but there’s nothing for it now, and he’s too tired to argue further. He drains the last of the coffee before getting out of bed, heading toward his wardrobe. But Javert doesn’t leave him to his dressing just yet, and Enjolras turns around, realizing he’s left something on his table, a jolt of unpleasant surprise hitting his stomach when he sees Javert pick it up.

“Abolitionist pamphlets,” Javert says, lowering his voice as if fearing someone will connect them to him. “Why do you have these Rene?”

Enjolras walks over to him, trying to snatch them out of his hand to no avail.

“I should think that would be fairly obvious,” he replies. “Please give them back.”

“Where did you get them?” Javert asks, and there’s an unsettled gleam in his eyes.

“That’s none of your concern,” Enjolras says, taking advantage of Javert’s momentary surprise and seizing the pamphlets again, stepping back.

“You shouldn’t have those,” Javert says.

“Do you believe in the slave trade, Javert?” Enjolras asks, steeling himself for the answer. “Because I’m certain I’ve made clear I don’t.”

“You are too young to understand,” Javert says, avoiding the question. “These matters are complicated.”

“No they’re not,” Enjolras says. “At least not as much as they’re made out to be. Undoing the slave trade is complicated, the matter of whether or not it should exist is not. Do you agree with it or not?”

“I have no opinion on the matter,” Javert says, uncomfortable.

“No opinion?” Enjolras replies, flabbergasted. “How can you not have one?”

“It is not my place to have an opinion on it,” Javert argues. “I am to do as I’m told.”

“Is that what you’d say to Frantz if he asked?” Enjolras says. “He worries every day his mother was sold into the trade.”

“Enough,” Javert says, losing his patience, voice growing sharp. “Get dressed this instant and meet me downstairs.”

“Or what?” Enjolras says, knowing he shouldn’t. “You’ll send for my father?”

“I will tell your grandfather you missed your lesson with me today,” Javert says, looking like he already regrets the words as they come out, but he doesn’t retract them.

Enjolras bites his lip against a gasp, Javert’s words cutting into him. For all their growing discord, Javert’s never threatened him with that before.

“Fine,” Enjolras says, soft. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Silence sits between them until Javert speaks again, and Enjolras feels fingertips brushing his shoulder.

“Rene, I…”

“No,” Enjolras replies, stepping away from the touch. “Just let me get dressed so I don’t _waste anymore of your time_.”

Javert hesitates then stalks out the door without another word. Enjolras waits until he hears him go down the stairs, then goes under his bed, pulling up a loose floorboard resting there and storing the abolitionist pamphlets atop something he found washed up on shore near the abandoned docks.

Signed articles from a pirate ship.

Enjolras dresses quickly, pulling on the navy blue jacket his mother likes best and tying his hair back a bit messily with a dark red cloth Courfeyrac leant him when his own ripped. He finds Javert sitting at the bottom of the stairs, looking guilty.

“I was thinking,” Javert says, standing up. “Since you cannot go on this journey with us perhaps we can go out one night when the sky is clear and Frantz can bring his books and his charts and I can teach you both some more about navigation. I am not an expert, but I’m rather well versed.”

He’s taking a page from Arthur’s book, Enjolras realizes; it was something they’d done with him countless times.

“I don’t know that I particularly want to,” he says, still hurt by Javert’s earlier threat. He crosses his arms, looking Javert directly in the eyes.

Javert sighs for the third time that morning.

“You may bring Auden, if you wish,” Javert finally says. “If he promises to behave. Perhaps I can convince your father along.”

Angry as he is, Enjolras finds he cannot quite say no for all the nostalgia he feels, a powerful wave hitting him and leaving a melancholy in its wake when it pulls back.

“All right,” he replies. “We can do that.”

“Good,” Javert says, muttering. “Good good.”

Enjolras follows Javert out after that, but he looks around the foyer before he closes the door, a sense of strange foreboding filling him up as his eyes land on the two decorative crossed swords hanging on the wall in the parlor.

“What are you looking at?” Javert asks, noticing his hesitance.

“Nothing,” Enjolras says, shaking his head. “Let’s go.”

The foreboding doesn’t go away when he closes the door

 

 


End file.
